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Edited on Mon Feb-20-06 10:56 PM by arendt
Originally posted in GD-politics.
Moderator - can I move the "greatest" votes of the two threads?
Flame suit on
Nomex gloves on
Fire extinguisher system armed
Incoming artillery radar activated
Prepare for ejection from DU, as a non-democrat (When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose" - J. Joplin)
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Beyond the Political Event Horizon
by arendt
"In the early years of their power, the Nazis let loose an avalanche of laws and decrees, but they
never bothered to abolish officially the Weimar constitution...it turned out that the Nazis showed no
concern whatsoever about their own legislation...finally the 'purpose and the scope of the secret state
police' as well as other state or party institutions created by the Nazis could 'in no manner be covered
by the laws and regulations issued for them'. In practice, this permanent state of lawlessness found
expression in the fact that 'a number of valid regulations (were) no longer made public.'
"...the (Soviet) constitution of 1936 played exactly the same role the Weimar constitution played under the
Nazi regime: it was completely disregarded but never abolished; the only difference was that Stalin could
afford one more absurdity...all those who (at Stalin's orders) had drafted the never-repudiated constitution
were executed as traitors."
"Technically speaking, the movement within the apparatus of totalitarian domination derives its mobility
from the fact that the leadership constantly shifts the actual center of power, often to other organizations,
but without dissolving or even publicly exposing the groups that have thus been deprived of their power...
The point is that none of the organs of power was ever deprived of its right to pretend that it embodied
the will of the Leader. But not only was the the will of the leader so unstable that compared with it the
whims of Oriental despots are a shining example of steadfastness; the consistent and ever-changing
division between real secret authority and ostensible open representation made the actual seat of
power a mystery by definition, and this to such an extent that the members of the ruling clique themselves
could never be absolutely sure of their own position in the secret power hierarchy."
- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
With the sad charade of the confirmation hearings of Sam Elite-o, the U.S. has gone past the Political
Event Horizon. As readers of science or sci-fi might know, the event horizon is an imaginary line in space
around a black hole. Once an object crosses this invisible boundary, it is impossible to ever escape from
the gravitational pull of the black hole. The object will eventually be pulled down into the black hole,
where it will be crushed to sub-atomic particles. Not even the light of its destruction can cross the event
horizon. Physicists calculate that the change in gravity per unit distance as you are drawn deeper into the
black hole eventually becomes so strong that objects are stretched as if they were on a rack until they break.
The lengthy introductory quote, from my nom de plume's master work, indicates the mechanism of political
destruction that will be applied to the normal political matter of our laws as they are pulverized. Existing
laws will be ignored, so will new ones. The law becomes whatever the Leader says it is. The people
having so much fun today pretending to run the government will soon be caught up in show trials, purges,
and mere spite. All we can be sure of is that the level of secret police power will grow stronger and stronger
until our communities and societies are atomized to that state of "superfluousness" which Ms. Arendt so
strongly identifies as the origin of all modern mass movements.
Setting aside for the moment the finality of crossing the event horizon, it is now time to admit that the
traditional two-party system has failed. We are at a juncture much like 1860, when four contending parties,
two of Northern and two of Souther origins competed in a free for all. Except that today, we don't have
four parties, we have one party: the GOP extremists and their punching bag opponents, the Democrats,
with one hand tied behind their back by corporate donations.
In spite of a torrent of unprecedented calls to get out of Iraq from current and former ambassadors, former
Reagan and Bush officials like NSA General Odom, and conservative theorists like Francis "End of History"
Fukuyama, both party leaderships have announced their intention to "stay the course" in Iraq. Despite massive
outcries over the trampling of our civil rights, despite the administration's stonewalling of its own Supreme Court
on the issue of habeus corpus, the leadership of neither party is willing to stand up and say that the ever more
intrusive (while ever less productive) intrusion of the boondoggle Department of Homeland Security is beyond the
pale of democracy.
But plenty of individual Congressmen and civil servants have stood up on one issue or another from one
party or another. Public opinion polls show that 52% of Americans say Bush should be impeached if
he lied about NSA wiretapping and/or WMDs in Iraq. And the evidence on both those subjects is getting
to the public, despite the frantic damage control efforts of the corporate media. Bush's approval rating has
been stuck at 40% for months. Every day, more and more GOP voters give up on idiocy like handing our
ports to Al Quida supporters, deputizing school bus drivers to look for terrorists, and providing body armor
to police dogs in Ohio while our soldiers go without it in Iraq.
Therefore, I have a modest proposal to make:
There should be a new political party formed, call it the Bring Back the Constitution (BBC) Party or just
the Constitution Party. The conditions for joining this party are simple and, in the current scheme of things
non-partisan. In a sane country, they should be motherhood and apple pie. But we are no longer a sane
country.
All U.S. government officials and military members swear an oath to Preserve, Protect, and Defend the U.S. Constitution
from all enemies, foreign and domestic. They do not swear an oath to defend a "unitary executive", a commander-
in-chief, or the Bible. Sadly, many officials and members by their actions and/or by their acquiesence have violated
their oaths.
The sole purpose of the party is to get control of the government, throw out every single supporter of the current
dismemberment of the Constitution, and restore the rule of Constitutional law to America. After that, it should
get out of the way as fast as possible. Unfortunately, the fumigation of our government will probably require the
kind of "Test Act" loyalty oath for officials, familiar to students of English Parliamentary history. Nevertheless, that
is not such a bad precedent to follow in times of incipient Religious War. Furthermore, the loyalty oath would merely
require adherence to, and avoidance of weasel-wording on, the fundamental points of the U. S. Constitution stated
in the Constitution Party's platform - plus a few corrective actions designed to prevent the whole sorry mess from
happening all over again in a few years.
Without further ado, here is my first cut at a program:
1. The immediate restoration of habeus corpus, and its application to all places on earth where the U.S. government
and its military currently hold control. It can be military habeus corpus, but it has to be habeus corpus. The public disclosure
of both the rules for putting someone on a "no-fly list" and a procedure for appealing such a secret designation. It is against
800 years of common and statute law in the Anglo Saxon world to suspend habeus corpus (much less to make secret
laws) without end date to defend against a stateless, faceless tactic - especially when such suspensions are applied selectively,
and not to people making threats against domestic opponents of the current administration.
2. The immediate renunciation of the doctrine of pre-emptive warfare, which is violation of the Geneva Convention,
to which we are a signatory, and the prosecution of those officials found to have facilitated this violation and the
violation of its convention on torture. As a treaty, this convention is United States Law, and we are bound by it. If we are
to be bound by international agreements like the WTO, which is also run from Switzerland, then we must be bound
by the Geneva Convention.
3. The immediate restoration of the Constitutional Separation of Powers.
....A. There is no such thing as a "unitary executive" within U.S. Constitutional history. It is but a euphemism for
....dictatorship. It is an abomination. Signing statements shall be expressly banned by Constitutional Amendment.
....B. The Supreme Court shall be reprimanded for declaring Bush to be President in a sui generis decision that
....was a blatant violation of both States Rights and the Separation of Powers.
....C. Provision shall be made in both houses of Congress to prevent bills and information from being withheld from
....the minority party or presented in such a manner as to effectively withhold them.
....D. The rules on holding votes open shall be rigidly enforced, and bribery and other arm-twisting
....shall be kept off the floor of Congress.
4. The immediate restoration of the Separation of Church and State, as mandated by the First Amendment and
testified to by the writings of our founding fathers and subsequent court decisions. If we are forced to abide by
the fiction that corporations are people (inserted in a decision by a court reporter rather than decided by the
Court) then we very well must abide by the court decisions beginning two hundred years ago drawing a bright
line between Church and State. So-called faith-based initiatives of fungible cash grants, and the operation of
government programs in explicit violation of civil rights laws, violate that separation and must be ended.
Beyond that restoration of separation within the government, the de facto violation of that separation and the tacit
condoning of that violation by the un-Constitutional regime (e.g., voter guides, gathering of church attendance lists) has
demonstrated that there is no fair way to make some religious activities "privileged" (i.e., tax exempt) under the law.
Therefore, we shall undertake to adopt the European approach of treating churches' financial and employment
transactions as any other business - that is, treating them equally under the business laws of the land.
5. The nationalization of electronic voting machine companies, and the conversion of all such electronic voting
to open source software with paper trails and recount information provided. It has been demonstrated repeatedly
and publicly, by major political and technical figures, that the existing systems are so flawed that they seem to have
been designed to be hacked. Voting is simply too important to be left to politically-involved and highly ideological
private control.
6. The immediate and full funding of national elections by the government and the complete ending of the corrupt
system of legalized bribery known as "campaign finance". The provision of free TV, radio, and internet airtime in
a fair and proportional manner to all significant political parties, along the lines of countries such as the Netherlands.
7. The rollback of weakening of ownership caps on media outlets, the de-conglomeration of the media, and the
immediate review of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and other violations of the right of first sale and the right
to own, rather than rent, personal copies of media. The restoration of some version of the Fairness Act, and post facto
fining of explicit agitation to violence, such as Pat Robertson's call for assassination of foreign leaders and
Ann Coulter's call to "kill the liberals". We can't stop codewords, but we can stop outright verbal assault.
8. The disclosure of significant (perhaps, conglomerated or otherwise protected) information on the $30 Billion
black budget of the armed forces and intelligence agencies. The U.S. taxpayer is paying blindly for services
that increasingly are being turned against the U.S. taxpayer. We have a right to information about the covert
actions we are funding, since we as individual soldiers and individual citizens will be liable to the consequences
and retaliations for these actions. Increasingly, we see dedicated career civil servants and ranking military
lawyers blowing the whistle on out of control intelligence. We are deeply concerned and demand more transparency.
----
Any sitting politician who cannot agree to these propositions, which, at best, roll back the situation to about where
it stood in 1990, should be vigorously opposed by the Constitution Party. Any politician, Republican, Democrat,
Green, or Libertarian, who can agree to this declaration as the platform to implement should join the Constitution
Party in a government of national rededication to our founding principles.
We should fund this party on the internet, ala the Dean Campaign, turning down corporate donations, and running
solely on personal contributions of less than $1,000.
Over to you, DU.
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